


Dismantle & Reconfigure

by nahul



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Atsumu is an engineer, Atsumu is sad, Black Jackals, But make it a fantasy type au, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Misunderstandings, OOC, Sakusa just wants to help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22284037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahul/pseuds/nahul
Summary: It’s one of them nights where the skies dance with each other. Purples lap up against pinks and navy blues, lick the wounds of the burning sun and pull each cloud into a whirling dance that descends into darkness.It’s one of them nights where Atsumu cannot endure such nights.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Dismantle & Reconfigure

**Author's Note:**

> This may be a small part of a larger project I'm trying to work on. Enjoy!
> 
> (+ Thank you Lotte for reading through this for me & motivating me always!!)

It’s one of them nights where the skies dance with each other. Purples lap up against pinks and navy blues, lick the wounds of the burning sun and pull each cloud into a whirling dance that descends into darkness. One of them nights when there’s the tingle of discussion falling through the air as though it’s the first snow of December, crawling through people and sitting against footsteps and laughter and drinks, when he hears it. Feels the tingle of the gossip fizz against the bareness of his neck as word reaches him. Even along an empty dock, words travel like wildfire.

Sizzles as though it burns; brandishes his skin as the words that fell out of his company’s mouth replay within his head. Darkened, appalling syllables that had curdled his speech as soon as it’d been spoken aloud, now curling around his mind like a weapon. A dagger poised go attack at any second.

Somewhere within himself, he despises the amount of power contained within the words. Gossip has the teeth of a shark, and it bites into his flesh mercilessly; rips off his limbs relentlessly. He should hate the way pain sears through his body, really.

But he sits and stares and endures the rippling pain that bleeds through his organs. Not blinking or moving except for momentarily raising his glass to his lips to down another sip. It is the triumph of a coward.

But he cannot help it. Cannot rid himself of the cowardice that lies dormant in his stomach, coils around his stomach with the deceptive kindness of a poisonous snake. And it doesn’t unnerve him, the way it rests between the guilt and remorse with practised ease. Instead, he relaxes into them feelings a bit more; not enough to serenade his soul into melancholia entirely, but enough to entice him into downing another glass of the beverage and will the restful ease of sleep to rescue him from complications that play themselves out in his head. 

He doesn’t notice the sharp slap of boots against the pavement, a whisper of a click against the concrete pavement the dress shoe glides along. Not until there’s a cold hand resting upon his shoulder - unmatched competition to the subtle breeze that has begun to pick up along the dock road.

“You’re cold, sir.”

As much as it’s a blatant and, frankly stupid, statement, Atsumu doesn’t feel any fire within him glisten at the sound of the speaker. Instead he exhales slowly, releasing a low trail of miasma throughout the atmosphere, allowing the fumes to transverse among the gentle ripples of the dock’s tide. Pushing himself off the railings, he draws himself to his full height and allows his eyes to brush across the figure beside him. 

The speaker ignores the apathy that rests within his eyes with efficiency that cannot be taught and, without receiving an answer, speaks again:

“It’s currently 2°C, sir, would you like to come inside yet?”

As though the mentioning of the temperature has suddenly caused it to spark into existence in a gust of wind, his hands pull his jacket tighter around himself. And the figure beside him doesn’t miss the nicks that weave their way across his skin, the rawness of his skin around his nails and the jagged edges of themselves. No emotion betrays his face, though, as he registers these features, and instead shrugs off his own jacket and placing it around Atsumu’s shoulders. 

Atsumu silently shakes his head. And they allow minutes to fly between them before anything more is said.

“Kiyoomi, you can go now, y’know?. Who let you out, anyway?” Detachment is what drips from his voice as he returns his eyes to the glistening purples that float along the sea.

“Koutarou was wondering where you’d gone.”

Atsumu hums at the information, a raised eyebrow being the only shift of his expression.

“Well, tell him I’m comin’ in in a minute.”

With that, he relaxes his muscles against the railing once more, slumps his shoulders and allows the ghost of a frown to grip his face and he waits. Waits for the retreating footsteps of his companion that never come, nor does the shift of his companion’s weight as though he’s preparing to leave. No, he stays planted to the ground.

“Y’know you can go, right? You don’t need my permission- I thought those permissions had been overridden years ago anyway,” 

Atsumu mutters the last part, but he doesn’t doubt that Kiyoomi catches every word.

Hears and stores it with such precise accuracy, the sort that a human could only hope for.

“You deactivated them 7 years, 11 months and 4 days ago to this hour, sir.”

“Yeah, well… put my deactivation of that to good use and use your intuition, or whatever the AI version of that is.” 

The words sound slurred in his mouth, hastily thrown together with the discomfort of the AI’s eyes still attached to his figure. Drinking in the slouch of his posture and the lazy way his left hand still grasps the glass held in his hands, and the way his right boot wears away its shine against the cobblestone path he’s been kicking all evening.

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t believe you should be left alone at the moment-”

Atsumu cuts him off with a raised hand, swirling the glass round and round as he pivots to meet his gaze. And there’s the urge to slam his fist- to slam his glass right into the face that possesses the transparent eyes that stare back at him. Monitoring him with the analytical gaze of a doctor that once made him so proud, but now fills him with some flare of anger that rises amongst the ashes of his dampened spirits that it takes all he owns to force his hand to drop to his waist once more. 

Transparent, indifferent pools of darkness clash with ashen chestnut, and Atsumu tries not to let the other’s impassiveness ignite further the flame of irritation that wears away at his chest the longer he stands. 

“Oh? And what’re ya gonna do? Lecture me, Kiyoomi? Read a few lazily searched statistics from the first scientific journal ya find n’ list some symptoms or somethin’? I don’t wanna hear ‘em.”

“Sir, your stats are too abnormal. It’s my job to protect you from threats, and right now with the given information, it’s safe to say you’re a threat to yourself-”

“No, it’s not. Your job is to do whatever I tell you to do, y’know? And besides, what do you know about me? All you can do is read stats. Numbers, Kiyoomi. All you know is  _ code  _ and  _ numbers  _ and information that’s been handed down to ya, y’know? Ya don’t actually know  _ nothing  _ about what any of that  _ means _ .”

He pauses, a sharp inhale amidst the torrent of words he’s decided to spew and even as the guilt hisses at him from the pit of his stomach, something within him spurs him on to strangle his vocal chords and mock his companion further.

“Oh, my emotions are too abnormal at the moment? Who cares? More importantly, why is it the job of a  _ robot  _ who hasn’t got the slightest  _ clue _ as to what any of these emotions even feel like to tell me whether they’re too much or too low? Wanna tell me why, or is that beyond your secondhand knowledge from research?” 

“Sir, I apologise for my insolence but-”

And he doesn’t know where along the line the thread he was treading along got so thin, but with the last syllable in the middle of Kiyoomi’s sentence, it snaps. Threads connecting him to any sense of sensibility lose all power over him and there’s just this roaring. This anxious gnawing roar within him that clatters its way through his bones and his veins and fills him with this indignation that he feels temporarily blinded. Thrown back by the surge of remorse that had been trickling through his veins, a dam threatening to burst that he’d pushed back further and further before it finally followed through with its threat.

And he cannot see. Cannot hear. All he knows is that he has to  _ shout _ to hear himself over this roaring, over the droning voice of the AI that will  _ never  _ understand a thing and so he does. 

“No. No, you don’t  _ get it, _ do ya? And ya never  _ will  _ get it, y’see? Because you’re not  _ like  _ me. You’re not like humans. And you never will be. Nothing,  _ nothing's  _ gonna change that. No matter how much knowledge you gain- how many emotions you learn, you’ll never get it. Never understand. So no. No. You don’t get to apologise when- when you don’t even understand what you’re apologising _ for! _ ”

And for a second, his shouts flood out the noise of the AI next to him as his voice rises with every syllable. Within the flurry of his mind, he can’t even squeeze out an ounce of gratitude that the docks are deserted this evening - that nobody is privy to him shouting out the anguish that slithered around the darker parts of his mind into emptiness except Kiyoomi. The target of unjust irritation.

Somewhere in his mind, he knows it’s not fair. 

(But Kiyoomi doesn’t understand it anyway, so what’s the problem?)

“You are just. A robot. Just a robot. You’re not real like me. You don’t get it,” he finishes, and hooded eyes finally rest upon Kiyoomi’s face once more.

His stupid, perfect face. Crafted with such realness that one wouldn’t be able to tell from a difference that he  _ wasn’t  _ human. A delicate mop of curls sits atop his head, stained a deep purple in the light of the setting sun and pearlescent moon that floats somewhere between the skyline and the horizon beyond, and his posture stays as straight as a rod as he digests the brunt of Atsumu’s wailing. The rest falls away with the breeze. 

Stupidly, Atsumu waits. Waits for a response, waits for him to retaliate, for a scathing tongue to lash out back at him the way Koutarou would. Or Shouyou. 

Or Tobio. 

Or Aran or Kourai or- or-

-Osamu.

He bites the thought back down, curses his mind. But Sakusa registers it. Because even though he doesn’t understand human thoughts, he’s tuned into Atsumu’s emotions much more than Atsumu wishes to admit. He just lacks the gentle tinge of tact to smooth his words as he speaks bluntly.

“This is about your brother, isn’t it?” Atsumu’s eyes narrow, but when he opens his mouth he finds himself mute.

“You are correct. I don’t ‘get it’, and perhaps I never will. I haven’t a family in the sense that you’ve a family. But I know it’s normal to feel this way when someone you love dies, and I know that everyone’s concerned for you. And I know that I won’t ever understand how, exactly, you feel- I want to help you. Even if that’s just standing with you through these things. I don’t know- you’re right. I don’t understand. But I’d like to,”

And Atsumu wants to tell him to go away. Wants a shouting match, a fight. He wants to tear apart himself, or die trying to tear the world apart with his bare hands. He wants emotions, some sort of response that pushes him back to the brink of reality, not floating somewhere between the galaxy’s edge and a gaping cliff that jolts off into nothingness and darkness and nowhere in particular. He wants  _ anything  _ human. Yet he’s standing next to the one thing that he cannot evoke a response from that isn’t some sort of willingful helpfulness that makes him crave the life he once had.

The life that died along with his twin brother.

But he cannot push him away. Because there’s tears blurring his vision and his grasp on his glass loosens and the glass clashes with the ground in a resounding smash that he’s almost deaf to. And the tumble splits something within him, allows the cacophony of sadness that welled up inside him to pour from his heart and from his eyes; permits tracks of sadness to mar his cheeks as he pushes his arm to his face in an effort to erase such evidence from his face. Even as sobs rack his frame.

And there’s a cool, metallic presence around his shoulders. And despite his want for something  _ human _ , he melts into the touch as though it’s the warmth of the person he’s the most close to in the world. Leans into the coldness and allows himself to cry for a while, as the mechanics of a metal hand rub his back in an attempt of comfort, dispelling his sorrows in a surprisingly human way. 

They stay there for a while, a collapsed heap of limbs and metal propped up by the brick wall that obscures their view of the sea as the sun sinks behind it and the stars make their positions visible in the darkness of the night’s sky. Just as the temperature plunges below freezing point, and the speed of the wind quickens its pace, Atsumu falls away from the AI’s grip. Though this time, his soul feels hollowed out and his breathing is tinged with the heaviness that accompanies the aftermath of crying. 

“I’m sorry,” he manages to choke out, whispers it as the stars witness him lay out his remorse for the night.

“It is okay,” 

“No it’s not. I tried to- I tried to hurt you even though you were only looking out for me and I thought that because you can’t feel anything it was okay but-”

“It is okay. I told you. We’ll start again tomorrow.”

“Start over?” Atsumu muses, biting his lip as he registers Kiyoomi’s words. 

“If that’s alright with you.”

“O-of course,” 

Atsumu jumps to his feet, scolding himself for his stuttering momentarily before he looks over to where Kiyoomi stands. Figure outlined by the illuminations of the silver moon, he stands tall. Posture relaxed and helpful and waiting for him.

So they fall into step together. Along the cobblestoned dock road that guides them to their temporary place of rest, aided by street lamps that spit out stains of gold onto the pavement, intervals that lapse back into the darkness every few steps. 

For a moment, silence reigns. Permeates the air before being broken by the sprout of an idea,

“About the… new start, Kiyoomi,”

“Yes?”

“Well… I thought I’d disabled it when I overrode them permissions but… y’know you can drop the ‘sir’?”

**Author's Note:**

> Ok. Alright.  
> Since last year my friend and I have had this sorta joke that Sakusa is absolutely 100% not a human he is just an AI or a hologram or something. And I've been threatening for a while to write something like... going into depth about that. This is a result of such a threat. So thank you Julia this one's for you!! xoxo
> 
> Thanks to Despair in the Departure Lounge by Arctic Monkeys for playing on loop the entire time I wrote this. Appreciated <3
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading this though !!


End file.
